Introduction to Modern Greek Literature: The Literature of Return
MODGRK 100
Subject & Catalog Number
Course Information
Description
This semester, our advanced Greek language and literature seminar explores the theme of return (broadly defined) in Modern Greek literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Examining poetry, prose, as well as comparable examples in art and film, we trace how homecoming—literal, imagined, ritual, and symbolic—structure some of the most enduring literary explorations of identity, transformation, and belonging. Through close reading of texts that rework the Odyssean paradigm alongside coming-of-age narratives, migration and exile stories, and cyclical or ritualized returns in dramatic chorales and monologues, students will examine how writers across gender, geography, and historical moment reimagine ancient myth, medieval survivals, and modern folklore within evolving literary forms. Special attention is given to the ways these works intersect with and complicate the transnational dimensions of modernism, producing a rich dialogue between local cultural traditions and broader Mediterranean, European, and global currents. Through a variety of readings, the course asks students to immerse themselves into the poems and narratives and ask what the meaning of return is for them: can it ever reach completion, how do/can journeys transform—or fail to transform—the self, and what kinds of home, identity, and community are constructed or unsettled through the act of "coming back." Alongside primary texts, students engage with critical scholarship on myth, memory, exile, and narrative form as a means of developing an advanced proficiency in both written and spoken Greek through seminar discussion, oral presentations, and analytical writing.
Course Notes
Conducted in Modern Greek. Not open to auditors.
Recommended Prep
Modern Greek 10 (or 90) or equivalent knowledge.
Available for Harvard Cross Registration
